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veal chop

Chasing a Veal Chop

On a Sunday evening in New York I enjoyed a lovely dinner at the Union Square Café with my friend Jessica. I was happy with my pappardelle until two thirds of the way through my meal, at the next table, a waitperson placed in front of a trim young woman …

My Ideal Seatmate

Ever since reading about Dutch Airline KLM’s new program that allows passengers to choose seatmates, using Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, I’ve been contemplating who my ideal seat mate should be. For a worrywart this whole idea is a great thing.

10 TWITTER QUESTIONS & 1 TWITTER TALE

Note to those of my peeps to whom Twitterspeak is as foreign as Uz-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan-ese: You may not want to slog through this one. If you do, RT means retweet. I spend a lot of time on Twitter sharing links to articles I write. I have cultivated a variety of followers. …

NOISY SEASON RANT

Beware of asking me to rant. I am liable to start today, five days after autumn began (also National Good Neighbor Day and National Pancake Day), and never stop until Flag Day. If you really want to hear loud and wild talk, ask me about the leaf blowers whose noise …

CAN YOU HELP MY MOM EXPRESS HERSELF?

Only eight weeks ago, I was on a half-hour bike ride home, all uphill, when I called Mom for our daily shmooze. We caught up on political scandals, Sarah Palin, literature, Oprah and Mom’s latest Bingo game. While we talked, mounting the hill was effortless. Shortly after that, her doctor determined …

LOSING MY KINDLE

Losing a Kindle or an iPad, it could happen to you (White Girl Worry alert) . . . I flew home from Boston on Friday night of Memorial weekend. At 2 a.m. before getting into bed to read, I emptied all my bags and clearly I’d left my Kindle on the …

CHILLAXING

I don’t claim to be chill, but I become even less chill when someone tells me to chillax. When I’m really excited about something and someone says, “Chillax,” it’s even worse; it’s what my friend calls “squishing the little bird inside of you.” Take, for example, the time I was …

EASTER DINNER, BEIJING-STYLE

My Chinese friend Tammy took a few of us to the courtyard of Ritan Park’s Xi He Ya Ju for Easter dinner (and my last night in Beijing), which included golden, crispy Peking Duck. Afterwards, we enjoyed duck soup, made with the duck’s body parts and soft tofu. All the …

A MOTHER SURVIVES “SURVIVOR”

Unrelated Announcement, my new article: CAN SEPARATE BEDROOMS SAVE A MARRIAGE? Weigh In! It wasn’t like I had a choice when, at the breakfast table, my then-21-year-old daughter Eliza presented me with documents to sign. The whole family had to swear to confidentiality or the plan was off for her …

PHOTOPHOBIA*

Like me, does everyone become as frozen as Michelangelo’s David whenever they think of all their photographs fading in plastic bags, on sticky non-archival album pages, and loose in various boxes, chests and drawers? Not to mention all those out-of-control digital photographs? Recently I wrote a series of three articles for …

A Mother’s Tweetmares

Following one’s daughter on Twitter carries risks for a worrywart. Especially when that daughter tweets all day long. Last weekend my daughter (the tweeter) threw a birthday party for herself at a bar where I knew she would be surrounded by loads of friends. It never occurred to me anything …

LETTER FROM BEIJING

Unrelated announcement: Worried about your waistline over the holidays?  See some great diet tips in my new Home Goes Strong post: Stock Your Kitchen to Reduce Your Waistline. When traveling, I experience this pull between what I feel like doing and what I think I ought to be doing.  In …

A BOYFRIEND MEMORY & FORGETTING NAMES

Though I have a fear of catching “other people’s worries,” I don’t worry about getting infected by my friend Baxter;  each of us independently has come up with the same things to worry about. While gabbing over cappuccinos the other day, she mentioned fear of forgetting people’s names.  This is …

Kindle & Me <3

Here’s how I came to fall in Kindle love  (though, as you may come to understand, I am sympathetic to impatient readers, so if you want to skip ahead, scroll down to where you see Kindle in bold). In addition to a lifelong wish that my stomach were flat, I’ve …

I’VE MET MY MATCH

Unrelated Announcement:  Check out my new post on Home Goes Strong, “You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Make Great Chicken Soup” Oh My Lady Gaga, I’ve met my match!  Below is part of an email I just received from a dear old friend, whom I don’t see very often, …